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Spec: Add pagination pattern documentation #4

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Description

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Problem

Many APIs use pagination (offset/limit, cursor-based, page-based) but FlowMCP v2.0.0 has no documented best practice for how schemas should handle paginated endpoints. Schema authors currently reinvent this for every schema.

Examples from Schema Research

After reviewing 300+ APIs, pagination patterns appear in roughly 60% of data-heavy APIs:

Pattern APIs Using It Example
Offset/Limit GBIF, OpenFDA, FRED, World Bank offset=0&limit=100
Cursor-based GitHub, Discogs, iNaturalist cursor=abc123
Page/PerPage Europeana, MusicBrainz, OMDb page=1&per_page=25
Token-based NASA TechPort, Google APIs pageToken=xyz
Start/Count CoinGecko, DeFi Llama start=0&count=50

Current State

Schema authors expose pagination parameters as regular position parameters (query params), which works technically but:

  • No consistent naming convention across schemas
  • No guidance on default values
  • No documentation on how agents should handle multi-page results

Proposed Addition

Add a cookbook/best-practice section to the spec covering:

  1. Recommended parameter names for each pagination pattern
  2. Default values — what defaults make sense for AI agent consumption
  3. Schema-level prompt template for paginated endpoints (once prompts are available)
  4. Examples for offset/limit, cursor, and page-based patterns

Priority

P3 — Quality-of-life improvement for schema authors and consistency across the ecosystem.

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